


An eye for an eye

by Saetha



Series: O Swallow, have mercy on them [Febuwhump 2021 Prompt Fills] [21]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eye Trauma, FebuWhump2021, Graphic Injury, Happy Ending, Hurt Eskel (The Witcher), Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt/Comfort, Lambert is the best, M/M, Papa Vesemir, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Scars, Speech impediment, Torture, Vesemir is only human, Whump, but he also tries his best, dimeritium, no beta we die like monsters under a Witcher’s sword
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:15:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29608605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saetha/pseuds/Saetha
Summary: Geralt pulls at his shackles in a fruitless attempt to do anything to help. He is past caring for his own survival, just needs this to end.“Is there anything you want to say? Perhaps in answer to our questions?” The commander raises an inquisitive eyebrow in his direction.“Don’t,” Eskel rasps. His eyes are closed, and his body still trembling, but he shakes his head. “Don’t tell them anything.”*How do you break a Witcher? Simple – like any other person. By destroying what, or who they love most. (An alternative explanation for Eskel’s scars and the long road of recovery that follows)
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Series: O Swallow, have mercy on them [Febuwhump 2021 Prompt Fills] [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138178
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	An eye for an eye

**Author's Note:**

> This is the one that finally broke me. Remember when I said I was gonna keep the fics for this month between 2-3k each to keep within my writing plan (which was: write 250 words in 8 fics each a day)? HHAHAHAHHAHAHA. ._.
> 
> I wonder what it says about me that I had too many ideas for this prompt. Shoutout to [Camille](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamilleDuDemon/pseuds/CamilleDuDemon) for prompting me to go with the ‘ultra-angsty one’. Well. I did exactly that. And then I felt so bad about it that I had to tag on about 8k of recovery. Please do heed the warnings. 
> 
> Also, yes, I am aware that Witch Hunters probably weren’t really active this early? Ah, the things I do to the timeline for the sake of whump.
> 
> Warning for a quick mention of a Witcher from Vesemir’s times walking out into the snow to never come back. 
> 
> Today's prompt was: Torture.

Vesemir had warned them. He’d warned them not to trust too lightly, had warned them of the cruelty of the people they were meant to protect. After the first few years on the Path, Geralt thought he had absorbed the lesson quite thoroughly, beaten into him and scratched into his skin as it was.

He had been wrong.

Or perhaps, he had simply been lulled into complacency by Eskel’s presence at his side, by the joy of having him close again after many months apart. They’ve been on the Path for two decades, long enough to grow used to being apart, but not long enough, _never_ long enough, not to miss each other’s company still. They had run into each other by sheer coincidence in Ellander, both lured by the contract on a nest of nekkers right outside the small town. Geralt had arrived only to find that Eskel had just finished despatching the troublesome monsters, and after collecting the reward together, they had decided to set up camp outside the village.

Perhaps they he should have become suspicious by the glances the alderman had thrown them, or the reluctance with which he handed over the money. But unfriendly townsfolk were nothing new, per se, and so they had paid it no further mind. Perhaps they should have become suspicious at the sight of several horses tied up before the inn, far more well-bred and strong to have belonged to any of the townsfolk. But bands of travelling mercenaries are nothing exactly uncommon, either, and so they hadn’t paid it any further mind.

Instead, they had curled up next to the fire after a hearty meal, content to simply be next to each other. Eskel has filled out over the last years, his body a strong and solid frame that Geralt loves to cling to. Nothing grounds him the way that burying his face in Eskel’s hair and breathing in his scent does, lying next to each other with no care in the world. They had fallen asleep, entangled like this and it’s the only reason that Geralt can come up with for how it has come to this – lulled into comfort and a false sense of security, all his senses turned towards the two of them rather than the happenings around them.

They had come late at night, when the darkness was deepest. An advantage for the Witchers, usually, but the torches they had brought with them had fulfilled their purpose and evened out the playing field. They should have heard them, but these Witchhunters had plenty of experience with approaching their quarry silently and neither Eskel nor Geralt are as vigilant as they should be.

A crossbow bolt embeds itself into Geralt’s leg with a _thunk_ , instantly jolting him awake. The input from his senses is a confusing mess at first, screaming agony from his leg, shouts, the smell of blood and far too many people where it should only be them.

Eskel jerks up next to him, hand on his sword and _Quen_ cast around them both before he can even think a single conscious thought.

“Geralt!” he shouts, not taking his eyes off the approaching Witchhunters who have apparently decided that just hunting mages and sorceresses isn’t enough for them anymore. Geralt has always known that this would happen, known that they would come after Witchers next. Although he fervently wishes that it weren’t here, and it weren’t now.

He grits his teeth and grabs the bolt, rips it out of his leg with an ugly sound and a wash of pain. At least it hasn’t hit any major blood vessels, although his leg won’t be in great shape for the fight. Geralt grabs his sword and hoists himself up, leaning against the tree behind him when his leg threatens to buckle in on itself. Eskel throws him a worried glance but doesn’t have time for a closer assessment as the Witchhunters attack.

As if he hadn’t already been able to guess it from how coordinated their attack was, this band of Witchhunters clearly knows what they are doing. They leave wide spaces between them so that even Eskel’s incredibly strong Signs can only take out one, maximum two of them at once. They always come at them in pairs, too, fighting in perfectly coordinated units. Geralt can see Eskel grit his teeth and cast another Quen. It withstands the next few slashes aimed at them before it frizzles out. Geralt pirouettes out of the way of a stab aimed in his direction, parries the hit, and leaves his place at Eskel’s back for just a moment to evade a cut from below.

He jumps back, intent on returning to his place by Eskel’s side, but as he brings his swordhand back up it brushes against the wound on his leg and it wobbles, costing him just a moment of balance and concentration.

A moment is all the Witchhunters need. They managed to jump between them somehow, severe Eskel’s Quen from protecting Geralt, and Geralt just isn’t quite fast enough to make a Sign of his own before the haft of a spear slams into the back of his knees, causing them to buckle as he gasps in pain. A second hit lands on his wrist, agony jolting through him as his sword drops from numb fingers. He stills completely when he feels the cold steel of someone else’s blade at his throat, rough fingers grabbing his hair to tilt back his head.

“Stop!”

Eskel, still surrounded by the orange glimmer of his Quen, turns around. His eyes widen when he sees Geralt and he lowers his sword, although he doesn’t stop the Sign, not yet.

“Drop your weapon.” The leader of the Witchhunters steps forward. He is a thin and stringy man, all bones and sinew with a glint of cruelty in his eyes that makes Geralt shudder. “Or this one dies.”

“Eskel, no. Run!” Geralt doesn’t get out any more words because the Witchhunter next to him drives his boot into his kidneys, making his world explode in red. When his sight clears again, he feels the burning of a small slash on his throat where the person behind him hadn’t managed to withdraw their sword in time. The fingers in his hair and the blade are back within seconds, baring his throat as far as possible to the deadly steel.

“Geralt!” Eskel’s voice is drenched in panic.

“Drop it!” The Witchhunter repeats and the blade presses hard against Geralt’s throat, once again drawing blood. Geralt hopes Eskel will follow his earlier words, will make use of his Signs and run away, but of course Eskel doesn’t. He looks at Geralt and closes his eyes, mouthing ‘Sorry’, before he releases both the Quen and the hold on his weapon. He doesn’t even see the hit coming that catches him from behind and drops him to his knees. Geralt screams out his name, but it gets muffled quickly by a cloth pressed to his face and whatever concoction they have drenched it with has clearly been designed for Witchers. Geralt keeps struggling, almost manages to break free before another kick into his wounded leg has him screaming and breathing in more of the toxic fumes.

The last thing he sees before everything goes black is Eskel, unmoving on the ground in front of him.

*

When Geralt wakes up again, he knows he is caught in a nightmare. It is the smell that assaults him first, even before the sensation of shackles on his wrists. Pain, fear, iron, various bodily fluids and waste, unwashed skin and sickness. And over it all, the stench of blood, so thick that he can almost taste it. But there’s also-

“Eskel,” he whispers. He forces his eyes open, takes a moment to adjust his pupils to the darkness of the dungeon they have found themselves in. The movement hurts more than it should, whatever the Witchhunters have knocked him out with making his entire body sore. Geralt has the sneaking suspicion that a normal human would have died from the effects of the narcotic.

There is a small groan in reply to his words, drawing Geralt’s gaze over to his right. Eskel is chained up in the same position as him, manacles around his ankles connected to thick iron rings on the floor, and arms spread apart above his head, each wrist linked to an iron chain set into the ceiling, stretching their bodies just enough to be uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for now, that is – in a day or two it will probably be pure agony. They’ve left them both nothing but their medallions and breeches, and Eskel groans again, barely lucid and shivering imperceptibly. His heart sounds out in an odd rhythm, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and Geralt worries that they have given him too much of the narcotic, have poisoned him, when he notices the dark lines running down Eskel’s bare arms from the cuffs around his wrists. Glowing with a faint blue hue, unlike Geralt’s. They had seen Eskel’s Signs, had known how strong his Chaos is, strong enough for his Igni to melt through steel if he so wishes. And there’s only one thing that can curb someone’s Chaos so effectively.

Dimeritium.

“Fuck,” Geralt whispers. “Eskel, can you hear me? Eskel.” Eskel turns his head a little in his direction, evidently having trouble focusing on him, his breathing harsh as his body tries in vain to fight the poison in its veins. He groans.

“We need to get out of here.” Geralt tries to keep his voice from sounding too panicked, but he barely succeeds. He doesn’t know what the Witchhunters want, but whatever it is, that they haven’t tied them to a stake and burnt them already doesn’t bode well. He pulls at the restraints around his wrists, but the shackles are as solid as expected, not budging a single inch. The same goes for the shackles around his ankles and he is rewarded for his efforts by a stab of pain through his wounded leg. His Igni is far too weak to have any real effect and thanks to the dimeritium Eskel isn’t in any state to help.

Geralt is tugging uselessly at his restraints a second time when he can hear footsteps approaching. His entire body tenses, neck aching as he tries to look behind him. In a twist of cruelty, the Witchhunters have strung them up facing away from the entrance to their cell, so all that Geralt has to go by are his other senses. 

Four of them, at least, wearing heavy boots and their usual leather amour. They smell of determination and old blood, soaked into the very fabric of their clothes. Geralt shudders. These men are cruel, he knows it without seeing their faces, can smell the glee of what is to come on at least two of them when the door to the dungeon swings open. Two of the men position themselves behind them. The other two come walking around, one of them the very same commander who Geralt remembers from the clearing where they’d been captured. The one next to him he doesn’t recognise; but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. His hair is ash blonde, eyes sunken and his entire body thin and stretched as if someone had tried to pull him apart. Geralt terms him ‘Beanpole’ in his mind. The commander takes Eskel’s chin between his fingers and jerks up his head.

“You’re both awake. Good.” His tone is the most terrifying thing of all – flat and businesslike, as if he is stating the colour of a piece of furniture. Malice and gleeful cruelty are bad. No emotion at all is worse. This is the kind of man who could dismember a person and feel nothing.

Geralt bares his teeth in reply.

“So glad to be of service,” he hisses. He doesn’t even notice the small movement the commander makes before something white-hot lashes down on his back, ripping a bloody groove across his skin. The shock is more intense than the pain at first, and despite his resolution to keep quiet, a small noise escapes him. Eskel’s body flinches in reaction, although his head barely moves in the commander’s iron grip.

“I never understood why some people feel the need to prove their wittiness in these situations.” The commander shakes his head. “It certainly won’t garner you any additional respect. Or improve your situation.”

“Fuck you.” Eskel grinds out. His eyes are burning with hatred when he looks at the man. This time, Geralt sees the movement from the corner of his eyes before Eskel jerks in pain, his head dropping again as soon as the commander releases his grip and sighs.

“Seems like you are keen to get started then.” The commander gestures for Beanpole to come up next to him. Geralt fights to stay defiant, to counter the dread pooling in his gut. Nothing that awaits him here can be worse than the Trials, and he’s lived through those, twice, he tells himself. But Eskel…he doesn’t know whether he can bear to see him get hurt.

“Do you know how Witchers are made?” He spits at the commander. It is probably a terrible idea to provoke him like this but perhaps, if he concentrates all the man’s anger on himself, it’ll take his focus away from Eskel. “You’ll never be able to do worse than they did to us. Whatever you want to know, we won’t tell you.”

“That remains to be seen.” The Witchhunter holds out his hand and Beanpole places a misericord in it. He slaps it against his palm. “Over years of experience, I have found that complicated torture apparatuses are really quite unnecessary. All that you truly need is a good whip strengthened with iron, some knives, some imagination, and lots of patience. And a few simple questions, of course.”

“Such as?” This time, Geralt is prepared for the sharp pain on his back, although it hurts nonetheless. He can feel the warm trickle of blood on his skin.

“Where is the path to your Keep? What are the defences? How many Witchers are left? Very simple questions, easy to answer.”

Geralt shudders to think what the Witchhunters would do if they knew just how few of them are left, how easy they would be to slaughter if they came with even just a small troop. They can never find out, he realises. If they do, then the Wolf School will cease to exist. Eskel shifts next to him, just slightly, and Geralt knows that he has realised it, too. It is with ice-cold dread that he begins to understand that they might never make it out of here alive.

“Fuck you,” he repeats Eskel’s words from earlier and, for good measure, spits in the commander’s face. _Perhaps I can at least goad him into killing us quickly,_ he thinks, already bracing himself for the pain.

They don’t leave it at one lash or two, this time. No. This time, the Witchhunter behind him is given free rein. He is methodical about it, criss-crossing each new lash with the previous one for the biggest possible amount of agony. Geralt grits his teeth so hard he thinks they might break to keep a scream from escaping his lips. Somewhere at the edge he hears a yell, sees Eskel moving and then jerking, but it only registers distantly in his mind. He isn’t even sure when they stop, concentrated only on drawing breath into his lungs. The commander waits until his eyes have focused on him again before he speaks.

“That was thirty lashes, Witcher. Do you want to know what fifty can do? Eighty? A hundred?”

Geralt only spits blood on the floor. He is fairly sure he wouldn’t survive a hundred. At least not consciously.

“A shame.” The commander moves until he can keep both Geralt and Eskel in his field of view. “Although I did not expect you to break so easily, not really. I would’ve been rather disappointed if you did.”

He signals Beanpole, who steps forwards and drives his fist into Geralt’s ribs, once, twice, three times. Geralt can feel it when they break, a sharp arrow of pain that shoots through his chest. He can taste more blood in his mouth and spits again, trying to aim at Beanpole and missing by a hair’s breadth. Beanpole retaliates by punching first into Geralt’s wounded leg and then his stomach, this time sending him into a coughing fit. At least they are still concentrating on him, and not on Eskel who hangs limply in his chains, chest heaving as his body is trying to combat the effects of the dimeritium and the lashes on his back. Geralt already knows that he’s going to regret his next words, but he says them anyway, trying to steal himself.

“That all you got?” he bites out, baring his bloody teeth. The commander raises his hand, stopping Beanpole from another unimaginative show of his punching prowess. He walks up to Geralt, carefully weighing the misericord in his hand. He slides its tip under the chain of the wolf medallion and sets it at the base of Geralt’s throat, just below his pulse point. He leans in, so close that Geralt can smell the porridge he must’ve had for breakfast on his breath.

“Trust me,” he says, very quietly. “By the time we are done with you, you will wish for an opportunity to throw yourself into this blade.”

Geralt says nothing, just watches him with as stony an expression as he can manage. He tries not to let it slip, not to make a single sound when the commander draws the blade downwards, slowly increasing the pressure until he draws a deep and bloody line across Geralt’s chest.

“You know what I find remarkable?” The commander asks when he withdraws. He takes a step back and drives the misericord into Eskel’s leg with such power that it buries itself in there up to its hilt. Eskel jerks and screams and Geralt wants nothing more than to tear the commander’s throat out with his teeth. He barely understands the words when the man speaks again, his entire attention focused on Eskel.

“You keep inviting more pain for yourself, and yet glance over at your friend here at every possible opportunity. Don’t think I forgot how we found you in the forest. He is so much more than a friend, isn’t he.” He twists the misericord in the wound and Eskel screams again, his leg buckling below him. The entire time, the commander isn’t even looking at Eskel, gauging Geralt’s reaction instead. And there is no way of hiding what goes through his brain at this moment, the blind panic, the murderous rage and the bone-deep desire to avenge, to protect, to keep Eskel safe from harm.

“Interesting,” the commander says. He nods at Beanpole who turns to walk around Geralt’s back that is still burning with pain. Geralt refuses to let his gaze follow him, although his entire body tenses. There are no more lashes, however – instead, Beanpole returns a second later and presses something into the commander’s hand that Geralt can’t see properly at first. The commander reaches up, touches the dimeritium shackles around Eskel’s wrist. Blood has joined the black lines running out from underneath them, as if they are flaying his skin raw.

“Dimeritium truly is a fascinating metal,” the commander muses. “Little to no danger for any ordinary folk. A mage or sorceress is reduced to a quivering mess within seconds. And you Witchers…not as strong a reaction as a true mage, this one, but enough to still poison your blood bit by bit and cause some…adverse reactions.”

He lifts the hand holding the object and presses it against Eskel’s chest, just below the Wolf medallion. Eskel arches his back, and there is a faint sizzle in the air, but no scream escapes his lungs. Instead, he shivers violently and retches, gasping for breath with a soft, keening noise. The commander removes the piece of dimeritium before Eskel can pass out, although his panicked, retching breaths abate only slowly. There is a patch in the shape of a small rounded star on his chest, skin puckered and weeping blood. Geralt pulls at his shackles in a fruitless attempt to do anything to help. He is past caring for his own survival, just needs this to end.

“Is there anything you want to say? Perhaps in answer to our questions?” The Witchhunter raises an inquisitive eyebrow in his direction.

“Don’t,” Eskel rasps. His eyes are closed, and his body still trembling, but he shakes his head. “Don’t tell them anything.” The commander slaps him with such force that his head is thrown to the side.

Geralt grits his teeth and doesn’t answer the commander’s questions. He knows Eskel is right, but he isn’t sure how much longer he can remain silent and just watch.

“Leave him be. Do with me what you want, just leave him be,” he pleads, uncaring about the desperation that enters his voice.

“Ah, true love.” The commander leans his head to the side a little. “How precious. Perhaps we should see just how far your love truly goes. Would you be prepared to turn traitor on your brothers, just to save his life and sanity?”

“Don’t!” Eskel chokes out the word with all the strength he has left. “Geralt, promise me. Promise you won’t-“ He doesn’t get any further before the whip descends on his back again. The commander and Beanpole move, but Geralt only has eyes for Eskel. He waits until his gaze alights on Geralt again, looks him in the eyes and wishes he could just will his strength into him.

“I promise,” he whispers, for Eskel’s hearing alone, and hates himself for it. It is all the time he has before the commander returns. He is holding a far more cruel-looking knife now, its barbed edge designed to rip rather than cut. It seems the blade is coated with something acrid and unpleasant smelling.

The commander walks over to Geralt, weighing the blade in his hands.

“A taste for you first, perhaps. As they say, shared pain...” He slowly draws it across Geralt’s bicep and this time, there is no holding back the scream that rips out of Geralt’s throat. Whatever they have coated the blade with, it burns inside the wound like living fire. Eskel twitches again in his restraints, naked panic in his eyes. The commander walks over to him and nods at Beanpole, who grabs Eskel’s chin in an iron grip, forcing him to look straight ahead. Eskel closes his eyes.

“Remember, Witcher: three simple questions. Answer one of them, and we will give you a break. Answer two, and we will leave you alone for a full day, send you food and medicine. Answer three and we will kill you quickly and mercifully. Answer none, and, well…we have time. And patience.”

The commander’s voice is quiet, detached, when he sets the tip of the knife on Eskel’s face, just below his hairline and next to his eye. He looks over to Geralt, waiting to see his reaction. _I’m sorry, Eskel, I’m so sorry_ , Geralt thinks.

He shakes his head and says nothing.

The commander draws the blade down Eskel’s cheek with agonising slowness. It only takes a second for Eskel to be begin bucking and screaming. Beanpole’s grip on his chin is hard enough to bruise, however, and he cannot escape the pain.

The commander only stops when he reaches Eskel’s chin. He looks back at Geralt who has dug his fingernails so deeply into his palm that he can feel blood running down his fingers.

“Any answers yet?” he asks. All Geralt can do is shake his head again, quietly asking Eskel for forgiveness. _Promise me, Geralt. - I promise_.

The commander shrugs and sets the knife to Eskel’s face again, this time closer to his ear. Geralt closes his eyes, but Eskel’s screams follow him into his mind. Someone grabs his own face, slaps him once, twice.

“Open your eyes,” a new, different voice says into his ear. “Or we will keep them forced open for you.”

Geralt obeys.

By the time the commander draws the knife across Eskel’s eyebrow, across his eye and his lips, Geralt is screaming, too, begging for them to stop, and barely aware of the tears running across his face. He is pulling at his restraints, heedless of any pain he might be causing himself even when he yanks one of his own shoulders out of its socket. All he can think of is _Eskel, Eskel, Eskel, I must protect him, I’m sorry, they can’t, they can’t, no, I’m sorry, not his eye, please, no_ -

Eskel’s own screams have nothing human to them anymore, just the gut-wrenching howls of an animal in pain. They slowly ebb away into soft noises when the commander finally stops, his body hanging limply in its restraints, head falling forwards, the steady sound of blood dripping on the floor.

“Answers or no, that is enough for today,” the commander decides. “Perhaps, some time to contemplate your choices will be exactly what you need to come to your senses. Remember, Witcher. Three questions. Three answers. We’ll even let our healer stitch together what remains of this one’s face.” He pushes a knee against Eskel’s leg, jostling the hilt of the misericord still sticking out of it in the process. Eskel doesn’t even react, just trembles a little.

They take the torches with them when they exit the cell, leaving Geralt alone with the overwhelming smell of blood and agony. Eskel is moaning softly from time to time, but he doesn’t move.

“Eskel.” Geralt voice is quivering. “Eskel. Talk to me, please. Eskel, I’m sorry. Please-”

There is no answer but a soft cough, as if Eskel is trying to speak but can’t. Geralt keeps talking anyway, although afterwards, he doesn’t really remember what he’s saying. Nonsense words, apologies, reassurances, little flickers of nothing formed into sentences, so that he doesn’t have to listen to Eskel’s blood dripping steadily on the floor.

He is interrupted by the sound of the door opening again. Geralt tenses and tries to turn his head around. His body, especially his back, ribcage and dislocated shoulder are screaming at the motion. But whoever is there, their steps are quiet and careful. Two sets of steps, Geralt realises after a moment, and a single torch that he can smell burning.

“Shit. Fuck,” one of them pants, once the light of the torches reveals the state of the two Witchers chained to the ceiling. “I heard them scream earlier, but this…”

One of them moves around until Geralt can see his face. He doesn’t recognise it, although it looks young and his clothes indicate that he isn’t a fully initiated Witchhunter yet. Neither is his companion, who looks nervous enough to be throwing up at any moment.

“We shouldn’t be here,” the nervous one whispers. “This is a terrible idea. Laetan is going to kill us if he finds out.”

“And leave them to be tortured to death?” the other hisses. “They’re just Witchers. They haven’t done anything wrong. One time, a Witcher came to our village and slayed the noonwraith that had been murdering people on the fields. Saved my Ma’s life. She said never to believe those who told tales of evil Witchers. They’re people, just like you and I, she said. Only with a different profession.”

“Please,” Geralt begs. His voice is breaking, scratchy from screams and overuse. “Please, at least help him. Get him out of here. Or kill us. Don’t leave us. Please.” He looks over at Eskel whose head is twitching just a bit, but whose ragged, pained breathing hasn’t changed.

The two youths exchange a glance.

“There’s that small side corridor that they stopped using a while ago,” the nervous one says. “Comes out behind the stables. Their horses are still there, we could…” He chews on his lips, eyes darting back and forth between the two Witchers and the cell door behind them.

“We’ll be back a bit later,” the first youth says. “Don’t worry, they won’t torture you again until tomorrow. And by then you’ll be out of here.”

“Don’t leave. Please. Don’t.” Geralt is desperate, yanking at his cuffs, howling when the pain in his shoulder blazes up again so strongly that it almost knocks him unconscious.

“I’m sorry,” is the whispered reply. “We’ll be back. I promise.” After a short moment of hesitation, he leaves the torch with them. Geralt keeps his gaze anchored to it until the shape of the flames is burnt into this sight, ensuring him that it wasn’t a hallucination.

Against his expectations, the two youths keep their promise. They reappear, whether minutes or hours later, Geralt can’t tell, this time with the keys to their shackles and a soft piece of cloth that they use to muffle Geralt’s and Eskel’s screams when their restraints come lose and they collapse in a boneless heap on the floor. They’ve even brought clean blankets that they wrap the two Witchers in. Geralt insists that they carry Eskel out first before he limps out himself, one arm slung across the shoulders of the nervous youth, the other hanging uselessly from his side. When he sees Roach waiting for them, saddled and ready, Scorpion tethered to her with both his and Eskel’s saddlebags on, he wants to cry in relief. Does cry, probably, although it’s hard to tell in the rain. They are even two portions of Swallow still left, just enough to make it possible for him and Eskel to survive this. Somehow, the two young man manage to help him up on the horse and put Eskel on the saddle in front of him. Geralt instructs them tie the two of them together so that Eskel won’t slip, before he looks at the faces of their rescuers.

“You should leave,” he says earnestly. “They’ll find out what you did, for us. Save yourselves.”

The two exchange a glance and Geralt can see the nervous one furtively grasping for the other one’s hand, intertwining their fingers and squeezing a little.

“We might,” the first of the two promises. “Stay safe. The Temple of Melitele isn’t far. Just follow the main road, then take the first right and you’ll already see it. They have healers there. Mother Nenneke turns no one in need away from her doors. She’ll be able to help. She’ll shelter you, should they come asking.”

“Thank you.” Geralt inclines his head, wills his body to hold on just a little longer. He feels around in the secret pouch that he’d sown into Roach’s saddle, pulls out the pouch that holds his emergency supply in coin, enough that it will always get him back home no matter where he is and throws it at them. “For everything. It’s not much, but you…this is a debt that we’ll never be able to repay. Start a new life together. Far from here.”

The pouch is picked up with a shake of the youth’s head, but Geralt refuses it when they try and hand it back to him.

“Just keep slaying monsters and saving people,” the first youth says seriously. “It’s all the thanks we really need. Now go, before they notice something is amiss.”

Geralt nods and digs his heels into Roach’s flank, gritting his teeth when every single step the mare takes jolts his broken and mutilated body. He doesn’t even want to think about the pain Eskel must be in. Roach seems to be glad to be away from this place, picking up the pace with Scorpion following along behind her. Geralt’s hands are slowly growing wet with blood as he tries to hold on to her reins.

 _Just make it to the Temple_ , he thinks. _Just the Temple. You’ll be safe there_.

*

When Eskel wakes up again, he is screaming.

Whatever his one remaining eye is seeing, it isn’t Geralt who is sitting at his bedside, looking pale as death with the sheen of fever still on his cheeks, one arm in a sling and fingers clenched around his hand. It isn’t Nenneke or any of her priestesses either, who have tried to patch him back together and barely coaxed him back from the brink, trying to restrain him now from ripping all the sutures back open. It isn’t the temple, its halls still and cavernous and usually so quiet that even a loud breath sounds out of place.

Geralt thinks he knows what he is seeing, but no words of his reach Eskel’s ears, no touch seems to break through the barriers that his fever-addled mind has erected around his brain. _Maybe he’ll be like that forever,_ Geralt thinks numbly when the priestesses finally manage to force another sleeping draught down Eskel’s throat. _Caught inside the horror of a memory he cannot escape, his mind permanently stuck in a place it cannot move on from._ He’s seen it happen before, more than once, although never to a Witcher.

The priestesses bind Eskel’s wrists and ankles to the cot he is lying on with the softest strips of cloth they have, to keep him from injuring himself further during one of his fits. It breaks Geralt’s heart to see him lying there, restrained, breathing unsteady and heart racing even in his sleep. The stitches on his leg have ripped and need to be redone, and despite the priestesses changing the bandages hourly, the mangled right side of Eskel’s face continues to weep blood and pus.

 _My fault_ , Geralt thinks, _all my fault_. He balls his hand into fists. A part of him wants to run, leave the Temple and never come back so he is as far away from his mistakes as possible. The other part needs to know that Eskel will be alright, needs to hear him speak, needs to look into his eye even though he knows there can be no forgiveness. Not after this.

Over the next few days, when Eskel wakes up, he isn’t lucid either. It isn’t quite as bad as before – after frantically twisting and tugging at his restraints for a minute or two, he goes completely still. His breathing is frantic and loud, and all that he brings out are soft mewling noises of pain. “ _No_ ,” he sometimes whispers, over and over. “ _No. Please no._ ”. Each word rips at the stitches close to his lips, sends droplets of blood to fall on his teeth. One time he cries and Geralt tries to wipe away the tears, but Eskel flinches back from his touch so violently that his wound dressing slips, exposing the mangled flesh on the right side of his face.

Geralt turns around and retches until there is nothing left to bring up again.

He takes to helping the priestesses with whatever small tasks they can find for him as his body slowly heals. Washing and folding bandages. Crushing herbs for poultices and potions. Cleaning endless lines of medical instruments, although he stays far away from any knives. Sometimes he can hear Eskel twist and scream in his bonds behind him, although the fits become less and less as times goes on. The other wounds on his body are healing, but his face still hasn’t stopped bleeding, each scream and movement causing the wounds to break open again. Nenneke does her best to help, and Geralt knows that without her, Eskel would be dead already, or his wound even worse.

One priestess suggests that they could ask a sorceress for help, just to keep Eskel from moving at all, and in particular from speaking, until he has healed. Geralt walks out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him. He only begins to cry when he reaches a corner of the orchard where he knows that nobody can see him.

*

It’s the middle of the night when Geralt wakes up to someone insistently tugging on his tunic. He takes a moment to adjust his pupils to the darkness and it takes even longer for him to make sense of what he’s seeing. Eskel’s healthy eye is open, his head turned to the side to look at him and one of his fingers has managed to snag a fold of Geralt’s tunic from where he has been sleeping with an arm pressed against his.

“Eskel?” Geralt’s voice is quiet, quivering. Eskel makes a low sound, as if trying to talk, but Geralt shushes him.

“No, no don’t speak, it’ll just make your wounds worse. Blink if you can hear me?”

A sliver of hope steals its way inside Geralt’s chest when Eskel blinks once in his direction, slowly. He pulls at the restraints around his wrists, making another soft noise. 

“I got you, Esk, I got you. Wait.” Geralt fumbles in his haste to untie the strips of cloth that have held Eskel down. “Don’t try to move too much though, alright? I should go get Nenneke, should tell her you’re awake-“

Eskel just reaches out and grabs Geralt’s hand, fingers squeezing weakly. Geralt takes a shaky little breath.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. I won’t leave you.” He wiggles his fingers until they slip out of Eskel’s weakened grasp. Catching his palm in his hand, Geralt draws a sign in it, from the language they have shared for ages. _Safe_.

Eskel’s fingers twitch and Geralt has to press his own palm against them for him to manage a reply.

 _Hurts_ , Eskel signs. _Face is fire. How long? How bad?_

“It’s been more than two weeks,” Geralt says. He swallows and reaches out, trailing his fingers over the unmarred side of Eskel’s face with the softest touch he can manage. Eskel leans into it, closes his eyes for a moment and an ache travels through Geralt at the sight that has nothing to do with the still healing wounds on his back. He steals himself for the next words. Some part of him considers lying to Eskel when he is still so ill, but if Eskel deserves anything from him, it’s honesty.

“Your eye’s gone,” he continues. “Nenneke said it was beyond saving. They stitched you up as well as they could, but it’ll…” _It’ll always hurt. It’ll never be back to what it once was. It’ll make people more scared of you than they already are. It’ll never change how I feel about you. It’ll never change the fact that to me, you’ll always be beautiful._ “…it’ll accompany you for the rest of your life. You should be able to speak again, soon, once the wounds around your lips have started healing.”

 _How long?_ Eskel signs again, gesturing to his mouth.

“I don’t know,” Geralt admits. “Now that you’re awake, a week perhaps? Two? I’ll have to ask.” He wishes he had access to drowner brains, to help him brew more Swallow.

 _Where?_ Is the next question. This one, at least, Geralt can answer, and he tells Eskel everything he has learned about the Temple of Melitele and Nenneke. He manages to wipe some of the cooling sweat from Eskel’s face in the meantime, gets some water into him by wetting a piece of cloth and placing it between his lips.

“They said we can stay as long as we need to,” he reassures him. “Said we’d be no strain on their resources. And that they won’t give us up, no matter who comes asking.” Eskel huffs out a little breath through his nose at that.

 _Lucky_.

“Yeah, yeah we were.” Geralt swallows. He doesn’t want to think about what would have happened if the two young Witchhunter apprentices hadn’t decided to help them, or if there hadn’t been a sanctuary like this nearby. Eskel tugs at his sleeves again, rips him out of his depressing thoughts.

 _You okay?_ he signs, gesturing a little at Geralt’s back, although he certainly doesn’t just mean his physical injuries. Geralt lets out a shaky laugh and shakes his head. Typical of Eskel, to think of Geralt when he is so much worse off than his friend.

“How could I be?” he whispers. He wants to touch Eskel’s face, wants to kiss him until he can drown himself in the sensation. At the same time, he wonders if Eskel will ever want to kiss him again. “You’re not. I’m not. You might never be. I-“

He realises only now that he’s shaking and that Eskel has wrapped his fingers around Geralt’s trembling hand. It just makes him hate himself even more – why is Eskel comforting _him_ , when it should be the other way around?

“I’m so sorry.” It breaks out of him like a flood. “I didn’t- I should’ve- If we hadn’t met up. If they hadn’t realised how much I love you. I should’ve just made up some lies, kept them from hurting you further. I just.” He breaks off, realising that he’s babbling.

 _Stop_. Eskel presses the sign into his hand with all his strength, which isn’t much at the moment. _Stop. No fault_. He groans in frustration when he runs out of signs to express what he wants to say. Geralt would fetch him a pen and some paper, but there are none in the room and it is late at night. And anyway, he doubts Eskel would have the strength to sit up and write just yet. _No fault_. _Not you. Not me_. _Bad luck. I forced promise_. _You endured_.

The effort seems to exhaust him and the healthy side of his face twitches, small beads of sweat on his forehead. The fever might have broken, but it’s not yet gone.

 _Love you. Always_ , he adds after a moment. Geralt can only shake his head, tries to hide his misty eyes from Eskel’s gaze.

 _Love you, too_ , he signs back, fingers clenched around Eskel’s. There is a soft noise from Eskel in reply, but when Geralt looks at this face again, he has already fallen back asleep.

*

Vesemir says nothing when he first lays eyes on Eskel once they return to Kaer Morhen. He simply walks up to his pup, puts a hand on his unmarred cheek, and slowly draws him close, until their foreheads rest against each other, whispers something too quiet even for Geralt to hear. Eskel nods, just a little, before he lets himself be drawn into a tight embrace. Geralt feels something inside unravel at the sight, a tightly coiled spring that had been there ever since they left the Temple to make their way back home. Continuing on the Path this season was out of the question for Eskel, and Geralt isn’t sure whether he will ever feel secure enough to leave him out of his sight again. And so, he had sent letters to Vesemir to warn him in advance that they were coming home, accompanied by a few brief words summarising what had happened without going into detail.

Eskel insists on helping to stable Scorpion and bringing his own bags inside, much to Vesemir’s dismay, but the old Wolf knows enough about his pups that he doesn’t try to force any help on him. Instead he just hovers in their vicinity. Geralt is absurdly grateful that the Keep is empty aside from Vesemir, the few Witchers that are left all out on the Path over the summer. He doesn’t think he could cope with curious questions and pitiful stares in their direction, and Eskel probably could even less so. They’ve avoided most villages on their way back, except when they had to stop for supplies, and even then Eskel had insisted on waiting outside.

 _We need food, not stones thrown into our direction at the monster in their midst_ , he had written, and Geralt had wanted to yell at him, but not dared to. Besides, he isn’t blind. He’s seen the stares from people they have passed on the road, on the few occasions that they had caught a glimpse under Eskel’s hood, his missing eye obvious even under the closed lid, and his scars bright and angry, sometimes still weeping blood when Eskel scowls too hard or tries to smile. (Nenneke had called his healing progress a marvel and attributed it solely to a Witcher’s metabolism. If he was very lucky, she said, Eskel might even regain some function in the destroyed nerves on the right side of his face, be able to move his cheek again. Eskel had signed or written nothing, only inclined his head in gracious thanks. Geralt had caught him out in the orchard that night, furiously swiping at nettles with a stick, a scream lodged in every single line of his body that he hadn’t been able to let out. He had waited for Eskel to exhaust himself and then carried him back into the infirmary, heedless of the way it sent tendrils of pain shooting through his back.)

Vesemir has no qualms looking at his son’s face, however, and Eskel forgoes his cloak and hood quickly, although he still carefully avoids looking into any reflective surfaces, wincing when he catches an accidental look at himself somewhere. Vesemir is quiet and practical in the way that he deals with his injury, and Geralt supposes he must have had plenty of practise. This is a Witcher’s keep after all, and permanent injuries are more or less a given in their profession, even with a body as unnaturally capable of healing as theirs. Vesemir has a bad knee that troubles him, especially in winter, Lambert still can’t raise one of his arms as high as the other, has sewn extra leather straps on his armour to help him support it, from an injury he doesn’t like to talk about.

They still both wake up screaming almost every night. The first time it happens, the door to their shared room flies open to reveal Vesemir, sword in hand, ready to fight what- or whoever is hurting his sons. All he finds, however, is Geralt curled up on his side with his head in his arms, trying to breathe through the pain of the memories and Eskel half sitting up in bed, hand pressed to the right side of his face where the scar closest to his mouth is bleeding again.

Geralt moves to the cot in his old room the next day, when Eskel asks him to in a carefully scribbled note. _I don’t mind you being close_ , he writes, _but perhaps we should sleep apart for now, for both of our sakes_. Geralt knows he cannot say no, even if it breaks his heart. At least, Eskel doesn’t turn away when Geralt leans forward to press a kiss to the left side of his mouth.

“Love you,” he whispers.

 _Love you, too_ , Eskel signs into his hand, not willing to risk any words today, lest they make the damage worse. It feels like a desperate attempt to bridge the growing rift between them – something has been stripped away from them and ripped open in the Witchhunter’s dungeons, something far beyond the physical damage, and Geralt has no idea what he can do to repair it. Neither does Eskel, and so they try to find a way around the ragged edges of their hearts without cutting themselves open. No matter where they go, it bleeds.

Geralt is on his way to the stables a week after he has moved back into his old room when he hears Vesemir’s voice coming from the kitchen. He only listens half-heartedly, not paying it any mind, until he hears their old mentor talk about sleeping draughts and pain medicine to someone. He keeps on going, until he can be sure that neither Eskel nor Vesemir will hear his footsteps stop and makes use of the fact that the second Trials gave him senses sharper than even theirs. He listens.

“Has the extra celandine helped any?” he hears Vesemir ask.

“No.” Eskel’s voice is rough and deep, his vocal cords permanently changed from what happened to him. He still has trouble forming the words properly, if he is able to at all without making the wound open up again, but both Vesemir and Geralt have gotten used to the new patterns of speech and the slight lisp that he has acquired now.

Vesemir sighs in reply.

“Alright. We can try increasing the drowner brain portion or add some more white myrtle. Or see if adding a few drops of White Raffard’s will help, although I’m not sure that it won’t make your headaches worse. How are they, by the way? Getting any better?”

“A little, I think.” Eskel sounds tired beyond words, and even at this distance, Geralt can hear the pain bleeding through. Pain that Eskel has never shown in front of him, although he had smelled of it. A smell that Geralt has grown so accustomed to he has paid it little mind. He clenches his fist, hard enough to feel his fingernails digging into his palm.

“We’ll try with the myrtle for now, then. More Raffard’s as a last resort,” Vesemir decides. Geralt has heard enough and continues on his way outside, where he can bury his face in Roach’s mane and no one will hear him scream.

Vesemir finds him in the stables an hour later, pretending to be busy by mucking out the same corner that he’s been working on all morning.

“Geralt.” It’s the tone he’s using, the same tone he had used when he and Eskel were boys and had gotten themselves into trouble again, usually on Geralt’s initiative – exasperated and stern, but full of hidden indulgence and sympathy.

Geralt stops what he’s doing and turns around. It’s not like he’s a gangly teenager anymore, set to defy his teachers and mentors at every possible corner. Something in Vesemir’s tone tells him that the old man knows that Geralt was listening earlier. He doesn’t question why – at this point, Vesemir has probably developed a secret sixth sense for their shenanigans.

“Why didn’t he tell me?” It finally bursts out of him. “He could’ve told me that he was still in so much pain. About the headaches. I could’ve helped. I-“ He slams his fist against the wooden wall of the stalls in desperate fury, startling Roach two boxes over. It makes him feel bad, and guilty, which in turn just makes him more furious.

“Exactly because of that.” Vesemir steps into the box that Geralt has been mucking out several times over, carefully to leave enough space between him and the opposite walls that Geralt can brush past him and escape their conversation if he so wishes. _Like you would treat a frightened animal_ , Geralt thinks. He wants to scream. “He didn’t want you to feel more guilty. To heap more blame onto yourself than you are already carrying.”

“I’m not blaming myself,” Geralt says, almost automatically. Vesemir snorts.

“Clearly.”

Geralt doesn’t know what to tell him, what name to give to the thundering emotions inside his chest. He avoids thinking about it himself, about the dark thing that is roiling in his gut, rearing its head in the quiet hours of the morning whispering that he should have done more, should have drawn their ire on himself, should have let them kill him before letting them destroy his best friend, his lover, the other half of his soul. He knows that Eskel doesn’t blame him, and somehow it makes it all even _worse_. _And_ , he thinks with a vicious sneer, hating himself as soon as the thought crosses his mind, _they can’t even talk properly about it_.

“I thought once we’d get back here, once we’d finally make it home, everything would be _fine_ ,” he says eventually, because he has to say _something_ , because Vesemir is standing there waiting for him to talk, as if everything could be solved simply by standing and throwing words around. “That he’d heal. That he’d feel better. That _I_ ’d feel better.” Not like this hollow thing, screaming at night when nobody is awake to hear.

“You and Eskel went through something terrible, Geralt. These things don’t just…resolve themselves and disappear.” Vesemir’s tone is reasonable and soft and Geralt wants to both cry in his arms and scream at him.

“That’s it?” he finally sneers. “No wise words? No stories from your past to show us a way out? Just a statement that it was terrible? I know it was. I was _there_.” _A part of me is still there_. _A part of me will never leave_.

“What do you want me to say, Geralt?” Vesemir lifts his hands in a gesture of defeat and that, more than anything else, frightens and angers Geralt to the core. Vesemir is supposed to _know_. Vesemir has always known how to fix things, how to make them better. It has been the one constant in Geralt’s life, now crumbling away like all the rest. The thought that Vesemir is somehow fallible, that the towering figure of their youth is no more or less a person than anyone else, is somehow unfathomable.

“Do you want me to tell you about Askra? How they tortured him death and all we found were a few discarded body parts? About Brodin? Who came home early from the Path one summer with burns all over him, never said a single word, and left the keep in the middle of winter one day never to return? About Lorcas whose leg we had to take because it had been pounded to pulp by an enraged mob, so badly that even we couldn’t save it? This keep is haunted by their screams and that of many more besides. Yours won’t be the first ones, although I hope they will be the last.” Vesemir’s chest is heaving. “There isn’t always an answer, Geralt. There isn’t always a magic word or deed that can set everything right. All we can do is keep loving, and keep giving, and keep working on ourselves and what we are to others and hope that it’s enough. Sometimes there is no moving on. Sometimes there’s just learning how to live with it, learning how to make it hurt less.”

He leaves Geralt standing there in the stables, pitchfork still in hand and chest hollow, Vesemir’s words knocking around in them like dice in a cup. Geralt carefully leans the pitchfork against the stable wall and lets out a few deep breaths, trying in vain to still the trembling of his hands. It doesn’t stop, not even when he walks over to Roach and presses his hands against her fur, buries his face in her mane and screams again. He hears steps approaching, slow and hesitant. His nose tells him who it is long before he turns around, wiping surreptitiously at his eyes.

“Hey.” Eskel’s voice is low and subdued.

“Hey.” Geralt doesn’t know where to look, so he stares down at his fingers, tries to scratch at the dirt under his fingernails. “Did you hear everything?” He isn’t mad at Eskel for listening in, not really. He’d done just the same earlier after all, and especially the last bits were probably loud enough for almost everyone in the keep to hear.

“Yeah.” Eskel doesn’t move closer to Geralt, but he does step around him, to where Scorpion is nickering softly at him in his box. He strokes his horse’s fur, the motion evidently grounding.

“Sorry. For not telling you,” he forces out, trying to form each word as slowly and distinctly as he can with only one half of his mouth. He gestures to his head, his face.

“Yeah, well. I should’ve guessed.” Geralt shrugs, the gesture belying the depth of his hurt. “Can’t be easy, to adjust to a new field of vision.” To not being able to speak and eat properly for months.

“Depth perception is shit,” Eskel confirms. “Cold drafts make it hurt worse.” He inclines his head a little, looks Geralt up and down, takes in the rings under his eyes, the too-thin form when he should have been putting weight back on here at the keep. “How are you?”

Geralt wants to snap back that he is just fine, that Eskel should worry about himself rather than him, but then he sees the expression in Eskel’s remaining eye and stops the words before they can come out of his mouth. How can he expect Eskel to share his pain with him if he doesn’t do so himself? _Sometimes there is no moving on._

“Feel like shit,” he admits. “Can’t sleep. Can’t think. Back still hurts.” It shouldn’t, the wounds should long be healed by now, with his enhanced healing and the time that has passed. But some of the lashes still smart, sometimes so strongly that Geralt expects to find blood on his shirt when he undresses in the evening. He never does.

“Let me see?” Eskel asks. It is the offer of…something, something that Geralt can’t put a name to. A second question, asked in the spaces between the words. He takes a deep breath before turning around and pulling off his shirt. Eskel doesn’t make a single sound when he sees the ruins of Geralt’s back, the grooves where the shards of iron woven into the leash had bitten into his flesh deeply enough to almost go down to the bone. Geralt can hear his steps coming closer.

“Can I?” Eskel mumbles. Geralt doesn’t turn around, he just closes his eyes and nods, one of his hands fisted in Roach’s hair, her reassuring weight right next to him. A hand settles on his back, right between his shoulder blades, touch light as a feather. Eskel doesn’t trace his scars, sensing that Geralt wouldn’t be able to bear it, but he increases his touch ever so slightly when Geralt leans into it. Geralt tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. He has missed Eskel’s touch on his skin.

Eskel’s hand moves downwards a little, stopping again. There is a soft rustle, and then the touch of Eskel’s lips on his skin, right below his neck, where the scars don’t reach. A shudder runs through Geralt’s body. The scabbed corner of Eskel’s lips catch his skin, but it isn’t a bad feeling, just… _different_. Eskel rests his forehead in the same space that he has just kissed, purposely pressing his just healing scars against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Eskel whispers and Geralt wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. He turns around, mourning the loss of Eskel’s touch even as he catches his hand in his. They both have scars around their wrists from the shackles and those, at least, they share.

“No,” he says. “Stop.”

Eskel squeezes his fingers in response.

“Once you stop blaming yourself. Not your fault.” _No fault_ , he signs into Geralt’s palm, as if he could burn the message into his body, his heart, by touch alone. Geralt makes a strangled noise and leans forwards, putting his forehead against Eskel’s until they are close. Eskel’s scent is almost the same as before, with layers of pain and the faint odour of blood woven through. But it’s still _Eskel_ , after all. The dungeons didn’t take that from him, Geralt realises, and although what they left behind might be different, it’s still _them_. Just like after the Trials. And perhaps, with enough time, they can learn each other anew.

 _Love you_ , he presses into Eskel’s palm.

 _Love you, too_ , Eskel signs back.

*

“You sure you’ve got everything?” Geralt looks up at Eskel, not even attempting to hide the frown on his face.

“I do,” Eskel says for the fiftieth time, patting Scorpion’s neck. His horse is eager to get going, smelling the spring in the air and the warmth in the southern winds that started blowing into Kaer Morhen the previous week.

“Right. Okay.” Geralt takes a deep breath and straightens his shoulders. Eskel is the first one to set off on the Path this year and it is a strange feeling, watching him ride off on his own. Most of the other Witchers are busy in the Keep, preparing their own departure – they’ve said their goodbyes at breakfast this morning already, grabbing Eskel’s arm and wishing him good luck on the Path, perhaps a little more firmly than in previous years. Even old Yorgin’d had a smile for him, and the old Wolf smiles rarely these days. Vesemir had taken Eskel aside before, for a quiet conversation that had left him smiling and thoughtful. No doubt he is watching from somewhere. Lambert is the only other Witcher milling about on the courtyard, having traded a tight hug with Eskel earlier.

“Hey,” Eskel says a little more softly, a smile on his lips. It’s made crooked by his scars, but it’s a smile nonetheless, as wide and sincere as any that he has ever directed at Geralt before. “I’ll be fine. You know I have to do this. I’ll see you coming winter, I promise.”

“Yeah.” Geralt swallows around the lump in his throat. “You better not be late, you hear me?”

“Same goes for you, Wolf. Stay safe.”

Geralt reaches out to squeeze his hand one last time, before Eskel grabs hold of the reins and urges Scorpion into a trot, out of the gate and onto the Path. Geralt watches him, arms crossed in front of his chest, until the has vanished from sight and he can no longer hear Scorpion’s hooves on the rocks.

“Think he’s gonna be okay?” Lambert has walked up next to him, pose mirroring his own. He is frowning as he looks at the space where Eskel left the keep and disappeared into the day.

“He will be,” Geralt says with a conviction that he doesn’t feel at all. Eskel has learned to compensate for his newly restricted field of vision, and the loss of depth perception that comes with it. His scars have healed as well they could over the past month, no longer breaking open when he eats or smiles or speaks. Both his and Eskel’s screams are far less frequent these nights, but they haven’t stopped. And alone, out in the wilderness…when they dragged themselves from the Temple of Melitele to Kaer Morhen, they had barely slept during their hours on the road, catching a few hours of uneasy rest here and there at the most, too terrified the Witchhunters would catch up to them. “He _has_ to be.”

“Well. Guess he’s as healed as he’s going to get here.” Lambert rolls his shoulders a little. “He’s got to get back out sooner or later if he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life cooped up in these walls.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eskel had said much the same to him when he’d told Geralt that he would depart on the Path soon. _I just wish he’d let me or any of the others come with him for a bit_. “It’s just. I’m worried.”

“Aren’t we all.” Lambert sighs. “Didn’t the old man even offer to accompany him for a while? At least to Ard Carraigh?”

“He did.” And he had been rebuffed as vehemently as Geralt, when he’d made the same offer. “Eskel said that he’d have to get used to being on the Path on his own eventually and it wouldn’t help. He was already terrified – better to face his fears now and head on, whilst still in the relative safety of the valley, before heading out there.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Lambert nods. He’s been far more nonchalant about the entire affair than Geralt and Geralt envies him for it. He’s done his best not to smother Eskel with his worry, to give him as much space as he needed to heal and come to terms with the men they are now, but he also knows that there’ll always be a sliver of guilt lodged in his chest. They still hadn’t slept in the same bed most nights, although some nights Eskel had asked, and they had spent them curled around each other under the furs. Since the day in the stables they’d never gotten any further than a few shared kisses, however, pressed on their skin where the scars didn’t reach. Eventually, they had been lulled into sleep by their shared breathing.

Lambert, in contrast, had enveloped Eskel in a tight hug the moment he strolled through the doors, fresh back from the Path last winter. He had taken one look at his face, grinned, and announced loudly enough for everyone to hear: “Guess Geralt really is the prettiest one of us now,” indicating his own sets of scars on the right side of his head, acquired in a fight with a swarm of overeager harpies during his first year on the Path.

After a moment of stunned silence, Eskel had barked out a laugh and punched him in the shoulder, Lambert had grinned back and that was that. Geralt had watched enviously as they had settled into easy banter for most of the winter, even when the cold made the ache in Eskel’s scars worse again and sent Geralt limping from the crossbow wound he had almost forgotten about.

“When are you leaving?” Geralt directs the conversation away from the subject of Eskel and whether or not they will ever see their brother alive again.

“In a week or so. Want to finish working on some bomb recipes first,” Lambert shrugs and Geralt has to laugh. It wouldn’t be a normal winter, without the sound of muffled explosions coming from the laboratory. Vesemir has long since given up trying to curb Lambert’s experimentations, and only asked that he keep his alchemical ventures separate from the rest of the lab, lest he destroy someone else’s hard work. “You?”

“In a few days.” Geralt is ready to leave now, but he wants to give Eskel a few days’ head start first, so he doesn’t have to worry about running into him in what would most likely be an awkward meeting.

“Already know where you’re going to go?” Lambert asks. Geralt shrugs.

“Due south, I think.” As far away from Temeria and Ellander as possible, although he tells himself that he should pay the Temple of Melitele a visit again, speak to Nenneke and thank her for all the help she’s given them. He had felt safe there, safe and protected, as he usually only feels at home in Kaer Morhen.

Lambert nods.

“Good plan.” He slaps Geralt on the shoulder, a sudden grin widening his lips. “Before you leave, you should try the new Moon Dust bomb I came up with. It’s good. A bit volatile still, but _good_.” 

Geralt laughs and lets himself be dragged along to the laboratory by an unusually chatty Lambert. It is the best way he can think of to distract himself from his fears, fears that he knows won’t be laid to rest until he is back this Winter and sees for himself that Eskel is still alive. He spots Vesemir’s face in the kitchen window as they walk along, an indulgent smile on his lips before he turns away to return to whatever task he was pursuing before.

Taking a deep breath, Geralt lets himself be pulled into Lambert’s chatter. Eskel will be fine. He’s more than capable at looking out for himself. _He’ll be fine_.

*

When Geralt returns that winter, his heart is full of trepidation. It’s becoming harder and harder to breathe the closer he gets to Kaer Morhen and his hands clench around Roach’s reins. The mare feels his anxiety, becoming more skittish on the last miles towards the keep, until Geralt has to stop and force himself to take a few deep breaths. What is he going to do if Eskel isn’t there when he returns, and doesn’t make it back before the first snowstorm? What is he going to do if he finds Eskel so changed that he doesn’t recognise him?

Roach throws her head up in the air and whinnies. Geralt reaches out to pat her and urges her to go on again, covering the last of the distance towards the Keep. His nose immediately tells him that he’s the last of the Witchers to arrive – the stables are as full as they usually get, and he can smell that more than one inhabitant has recently crossed the courtyard. Amongst those smells he can scent celandine and wet earth and-

“Geralt!” Eskel appears at the top of the steps leading down to the courtyard. Geralt has only just managed to dismount from Roach’s back, legs aching after his long ride, before Eskel barrels into him, wrapping him in a hug.

“You made it back,” Eskel whispers. “I was starting to get worried, thinking you might not come.”

“Of course I came back,” Geralt closes his eyes and hugs him back with all his might. He breathes in Eskel’s scent, searching for pain or the scent of old blood that had surrounded him like a cloud last year. He smells a little of both, but far more subdued this time, and when they part again, the left side of Eskel’s lips curls up in a genuine smile.

He looks good. Healthy, despite the slight frown and the permanent lines that pain has etched into his face. His scars have continued to heal, looking far less like they might break open again at any moment and his eye-

“What’s this?” Geralt gestures towards the right side of his face and the eye that now occupies the once empty eyesocket. It looks almost exactly like Eskel’s healthy eye, slightly darker in colouring perhaps and a little slower to change when his pupils contract.

“Oh, that.” Eskel reaches up to rub his scarred eye lid a little. He smiles again. “Lambert got it for me. Spent an unreasonable amount of his coin to get a glassblower to make it, and then a mage to enchant it so that it would change depending on the amount of light that falls on it, make it look more natural. I can’t see anything with it, but it should certainly make people less frightened.” His words still come slower than usual, and accompanied by a slight lisp, but it’s as much as Geralt has heard him speak in weeks before. He doesn’t know what surprises him more, Eskel’s extraordinarily good spirits, or Lambert’s unexpected thoughtfulness. It stings just a little that he’s never thought of anything like it himself.

“I’m glad,” he says with a smile. “Are you- How are you doing?”

Eskel’s smile slips a little, his expression growing more thoughtful. He seems on the verge of answering before he shakes his head, grabs Geralt’s arm and squeezes it a little.

“Not now. I’ll tell you later. Do you need help with Roach? Otherwise, I’ll see if I can scrounge up some leftovers from lunch for you.”

“Leftovers would be nice.”

Vesemir finds Geralt in the stables when he is rubbing down Roach and giving her a few extra treats for her hard work on the Path this year.

“Pup,” he says with a smile as wide as the sky. “You’re back.” Vesemir’s hug is just as firm as Eskel’s and Geralt finds himself relaxing in his arms. If Vesemir is okay, if he isn’t brimming with worry, then things might really be alright.

“You look haggard,” Vesemir says, after looking him over, hands on his shoulders. He pulls him close again, knocking their foreheads together. “Hard year on the Path?”

“Yeah.” Geralt swallows. There are some memories he doesn’t want to dredge up yet, not here, not now, not when he is still raw all over and has only just begun to feel soothed and safe by the sensations of home all around him. “Yeah, it’s been…” he breaks off and catches himself. “I’m glad to be home.”

“And I’m glad to have you back.” Vesemir runs his hand through Geralt’s hair, the same way he used to when Geralt was a little boy and he had tried to soothe his nightmares away. “Come inside and have some food. Rest.”

Geralt leans into his touch a little and nods.

“How’s Eskel?” he asks, unable to contain his anxiety any longer. He’s still afraid that the man he has met earlier was only a façade.

“Better,” Vesemir tells him. “He’s...he’s been working hard. And some things will never disappear, but yes, he’s better. He can tell you himself, whenever he so wishes.”

“Okay.” Geralt returns to looking after Roach, before shouldering his saddle bags and heading inside. The rest of the day passes in a daze, between dropping his bags and armour in his room, cleaning himself up and finding the food Eskel has been able to procure for him. Eskel hovers close, but never too close and Geralt’s attention is often diverted by the other Witchers, asking him for stories from his time on the Path. Lambert, in particular, seems to be more than glad to have him back and Geralt obliges their wishes.

It isn’t until he gets to bed that he realises he hasn’t really talked to Eskel all evening, and the thought make his heart sting a little. Perhaps Eskel doesn’t need him anymore. Perhaps Eskel is content the way he is now, content the way he seems to have grown on the Path. However, he is simply too tired to act on any of these thoughts now, the exhaustion of the trek home and a year on the Path finally bleeding through and pulling him under into dreamless sleep.

It isn’t until the next night that Eskel comes to find him, inviting himself into Geralt’s room with a quiet knock on his door, just after Geralt has left the main hall to go to bed.

“Come in.” He was just in the process of pulling off his boots and ridding himself of his other clothes when the door opens and Eskel steps through. He looks relaxed, wearing nothing but his wine-red shirt and some black pants and Geralt finds himself looking at him, the strong lines of his body that he knows so intimately and yet somehow not at all. After a second, he goes back to pulling off his boots and then his shirt, hesitating only for a moment before ridding himself of his pants, too, until he is only wearing his breeches. He can feel Eskel’s gaze on his skin, scrutinising the scars on his body, the new lines that have been added since the Witchhunters had marred it with their cruelty.

When Geralt looks up at him again, Eskel seems to be caught somewhere between moving and watching, in a space of half-spoken words that tremble between them.

“Sorry it took me so long. I thought you needed the sleep, last night,” Eskel says when he finally comes closer. He sits down on Geralt’s bed, far enough away so as not to be intrusive, but close enough to touch if they wish.

“Yeah. I-“ _Missed you. Missed having you close_. “I was exhausted.”

After a short moment of hesitation, Eskel moves and begins to pull off his own shirt. It takes him a moment as he makes sure not to let the fabric slide over his face and catch on his scars. He takes Geralt’s hand and places it on his chest, right above the small, rounded scar the piece of dimeritium left. Geralt can feel his heartbeat through his palm, quiet and steady, the same sound that has accompanied him over the years.

Eskel scoots just the smallest bit closer, Geralt’s hand on his chest, and reaches out with his own fingers, pausing before he touches Geralt’s skin, quietly asking for permission. Geralt just nods. Eskel’s fingers find the traces of old scars, their tips running along the raised edges of his skin, avoiding the line that goes straight down his chest, courtesy of the Witchhunter’s blade. He gets caught up on a new a scar across Geralt’s ribs, starting at his waist and drawing up all the way to the sternum. The scar is neat and well healed, Nenneke’s handiwork.

“Basilisk,” Geralt says quietly. “Had to buy a whole new set of armour.”

Another scar, this one a series of puncture wounds right below his hipbones.

“Nekker. Caught me unawares when I was trying to defend myself against its comrades.”

A slash across his shoulder, puckered and ugly, because he’d had to stitch it closed on his own and it kept breaking open again.

“Bandits. Wanted to steal Roach. I stole their gear and food instead, but one of them’d had more than a little skills with a sword.”

More scars, each and every one with a story attached. There are many new ones this year, more than there should be. Finally, Eskel reaches the one that Geralt had been afraid of. He swallows, tries to keep his voice going. It’s a small thing, a starshaped little wound on his bicep, with a corresponding exit wound on the other side.

“Crossbow bolt. Witchhunters.” He looks away, doesn’t want to see the expression on Eskel’s face at the words. His hands ball themselves into fists on the bedding, his own breathing unnaturally loud in his ears. Eskel moves his touch away from the wound, places his palm on Geralt’s cheek instead. He leans forwards until their foreheads are touching and takes a shaky breath.

“I still dream of them,” Eskel whispers. His eyes are closed; it seems to be easier to speak, that way. “I think I’m fine, and then I hear a sound or smell something – the rasp of a blade, the jangle of iron, that stench of damp water and rot, and suddenly I’m _back there_ , and there’s nothing I can do. I can hear you screaming again.” He presses his lips together.

“I tried so hard to remember your laughter instead. The way you used to sing. The soft words you always had for me. But all I could hear were your screams, over and over again, begging for them to stop, begging for them to kill us. One week on the Path it kept raining, and the damp _hurt_ and the smell was the same and- It was so bad that all I could do was to drag myself into a forgotten hut and crawl into my bedroll. I didn’t leave that place for seven days, until Scorpion practically dragged me out. And three days later I was on another contract, in a village where the children thought my scars were interesting rather than frightening, and all of a sudden it seemed like nothing more than a bad dream, like I was only imagining how bad it could be. Like I was a terrible liar, a pretender, using my pain as an excuse.”

A quiet noise rises up in his throat, low and wounded as it makes its way past his lips.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay again, Geralt.” The confession falls between them, a soft and fragile thing fluttering its broken wings that Geralt doesn’t know how to save.

He hasn’t even realised that his fingers are shaking until he cups them around the back of Eskel’s throat, trying to suffuse him with the warmth and strength that he wants to give him.

“I went looking for them, in the summer.” He returns Eskel’s confession with one of his own. “I thought, perhaps if I could face them again, but on my own terms, it wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps I could quiet the nightmares, the screaming, with their blood.” He shudders a little at the memory.

“I found a patrol, not far from Ellander. A sergeant and his apprentice. I saw them and all I wanted to do was to kill them.”

Eskel’s fingers are a steady weight on his skin, his heartbeat a reassuring rhythm in his ears. Geralt plucks up his courage, knowing that if he doesn’t speak about it now, he never will.

“I asked them if they knew of a fort nearby. Of a commander who had captured two Witchers last year. The sergeant just laughed and I. All I could hear was that man’s quiet voice before he started to cut you open. I don’t think he stood much of a chance at all. The next thing I remember is my hands covered in blood, a crossbow bolt sticking out of my arm, me holding the blade to the apprentice’s throat. He was trembling and crying. I asked him after the fort and he told me it had been abandoned last year. He promised he’d do anything I wanted, if I’d just let him go. He _promised_. He looked so much like the ones who saved us, who let us go. I couldn’t-“

Geralt stops again, waiting for Eskel to say something, to draw back perhaps, in disgust or anger, but Eskel doesn’t move, doesn’t utter a single word, just keeps stroking his thumb along the line of Geralt’s jaw in smooth, relaxing lines.

“I let him run. I don’t know if he ever returned to them, ever told anyone about the white-haired monster that slaughtered his mentor. I don’t know. I found the fort again though. Found…found the room where it happened. I could still smell your blood on the floor. Or at least I thought I could. There was so much of it, layered all over each other.”

He releases a long and shaky breath, the remembered smell of explosives still filling his nostrils.

“Stuffed it full with bombs and blew it to hell. The entire thing. It…felt good. Far better than filling that void with blood would’ve been, I think. But sometimes, I’m not sure. Sometimes, I just want to see them all burn and it terrifies me, more than anything. I have nightmares where the apprentice’s screams and yours sound exactly the same.”

A big sigh escapes Eskel at the revelation. He moves in to kiss Geralt, just the lightest touch of his lips on Geralt’s, his scars rough against his skin.

“You ‘re not a monster, Geralt,” he whispers. “That sergeant won’t hurt hurt anybody else ever again. And you destroyed the fort. You-“ He leans back a little. “Thank you. I stayed as far away as I could, didn’t have the courage to face it.”

This time it’s Geralt who surges forward to kiss him, slightly more forceful than before, desperate to taste him on his lips. There is salt in their kiss and he doesn’t know whose tears they are. It isn’t important.

“I don’t think wounds like this are meant to heal and leave no trace,” Geralt finally breaks the silence again. _Sometimes there is no moving on. Sometimes there’s just learning how to live with it, learning how to make it hurt less_. His touch is as light as a feather on Eskel’s scars. Eskel leans into it, just a little, permits him to touch where he’s never been allowed to before. “I don’t think you ever _have_ to be okay again. Just alive. The fort is gone, but you’re still here. You survived.” The smallest of smiles slips on his lips. “ _We_ survived.”

Eskel leans against him, both hands now exploring the lean lines of his body where he’ll have to bulk up over winter again.

“We did, didn’t we,” he says, kissing the scar on Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt shudders a little against him.

“I missed you.” _You are so beautiful, still. Nothing could ever change that for me_ , Geralt thinks. He wants to plant kisses on every single one of Eskel’s scars, too, wants to let the feeling of Eskel’s skin on his, the sound of his quiet laughter, the lively glint in his eye, drown out all the memories of agony that has been etched so deeply into their flesh. Wants to paint over those wounds with moments made of brightness and joy, moments that are theirs and theirs alone.

His fingers intertwine with Eskel’s, and he moves, presses them against his palm.

 _Love you_.

 _Love you, too_.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that in the books Nenneke says she’s known Geralt since he was a little boy, but I tweaked that somewhat for this one.
> 
> Also, do feel free to yell at me on [Tumblr](https://heartoferebor.tumblr.com)! Always happy to chat, even if I might take some time to reply to messages.


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